“Well then; that is not very promising ground to build on, is it, bambina mia!” replied Quinto.

“It may be, that as far as the man himself is concerned, the match that has been made for him would be rather the reverse of a difficulty in the way,” rejoined Bianca.

“But the difficulty will not come from the man himself, cara mia!  It would be doing you wrong to suppose that to be at all likely.  I don’t suppose it; but—­do you imagine that the Cardinal Legate will permit you to snatch his niece’s proposed husband from out of her mouth!  It would be a worse job than the other,” said Quinto, shaking his head emphatically.

“So that you are all for the uncle, papa mio?” rejoined Bianca; yawning, as if she were tired of discussing the subject.

“Well, I confess it seems to my poor judgment the better scheme, and indeed a very promising scheme.  Depend upon it, my child, an old man, who is his own master, is the better and safer game,” replied Quinto.

“Very well!  Have at the old man then, as you call him; though, as I have told you, Quinto, he is not an old man—­not over forty-five I should say; at all events the right side of fifty, I’d wager anything!  But I tell you fairly, that a less promising subject I never saw.  A man, who has lived till that age a bachelor, though the head of his family,—­and a bachelor of the out-and-out moral and respectable sort, mind you,—­the great friend of the Cardinal; trustee to nunneries, and all that sort of thing!—­a man who looks at you and speaks to you as if he was a master of ceremonies presenting a Duchess to a Queen,—­a man, I should say, who had never cared for a woman in his life, and was very unlikely to begin to do so now,” said Bianca, yawning again as she finished speaking.

“Bambina mia,” replied Quinto, “you are a very clever child, and you know a great many things.  But you have not yet sufficiently studied the elderly gentleman department of human nature.  If the Marchese Lamberto is as you describe him, it may be, it is true, that he is one of those men for whom female beauty has no charm, and on whom any kind of attack would be thrown away and mere lost labour.  But it is far more likely that the exact reverse may be found to be the case!  A thousand circumstances of his social position, or even of his temper and turn of mind, may have kept him a bachelor,—­may have kept him out of the way of women altogether.  He may be found cautious, haughty, backward to woo, requiring to be wooed, in love with the respectabilities of his social standing; but depend upon it, bambina mia, if you can once awaken the dormant passion of such a man, you may produce effects wholly irresistible,—­you may do anything with him!  His love would be like a frozen torrent when the thaw comes!  It would dash aside every opposition that could be offered it.  The calculated and calculating tentatives, and coquettings and nibblings of your practised lovers, who have been in love a dozen times, would be as a trickling rill to an ocean wave, compared to what might be expected from the passion of a heart first strongly moved at the time of life the Marchese has reached.  Fascinate such a man as that, and in such a position, bambina mia, and all the governors, and all the Cardinals that ever mumbled a mass, won’t avail to prevent him from being your own!”